Breaking Points with Krystal and Saagar - 9/13/21: Vaccine Mandate, 9/11 Retrospective, Dubya's Speech, Drone Strikes, Bernie vs Manchin, Cali Recall, Wall St Greed, and More!

Episode Date: September 13, 2021

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Hey guys, thanks for listening to Breaking Points with Crystal and Sagar. We're going to be totally upfront with you. We took a big risk going independent. To make this work, we need your support to beat the corporate media. CNN, Fox, MSNBC, they are ripping this country apart. They are making millions of dollars doing it. To help support our mission of making all of us hate each other less, hate the corrupt ruling class more, support the show. Become a Breaking Points premium member

today, where you get to watch and listen to the entire show ad free and uncut an hour early before everyone else. You get to hear our reactions to each other's monologues. You get to participate in weekly ask me anythings, and you don't need to hear our annoying voices pitching you like I am right now. So what are you waiting for? Go to breakingpoints.com, become a premium member today, which is available in the show notes. Enjoy the show, guys. Good morning, everybody. Happy Monday. We have an amazing show for everybody today. What do we have, Crystal? Indeed, we do. Lots to get to today. First of all, some very revelatory documents released revealing some new links that we did not specifically know about between Saudi and the 9-11 hijackers. Former President George W. Bush gave a big speech that was predictably horrific.

We've got new information about that final drone strike in Afghanistan. There were already indications that a bunch of civilians were murdered in that drone strike. Of course, the military was lying, saying, oh, we got this great ISIS target. Total lie. But they would never tell us who it was, so this was always suspicious from the start. New York Times went and they dug deep and they revealed exactly what happened on that day. We'll give you all of the details there. Also, some new commentary from Joe Manchin about what he will and won't support in terms of that reconciliation bill. Matt Stoller is going to be on with the way that companies and CEOs profited

off of 9-11 at a time when the country was suffering. They put their greed first. Not that that will be any big surprise to you. But we wanted to start this morning with Biden's big announcement last week on Thursday, taking a much more aggressive approach to getting people vaccinated. Let's take a listen to a little bit of what he had to say. So tonight, I'm announcing that the Department of Labor is developing an emergency rule to require all employers with 100 or more employees

that together employ over 80 million workers to ensure their workforces are fully vaccinated. So he frames this as this isn't about freedom or personal choice. This is about keeping people safe. Just let me walk you through the details of what exactly he announced in this speech and the executive orders that he's pushing here moving forward. He's going to, these measures will affect tens of millions of Americans, include mandatory coronavirus vaccination for all federal employees and contractors, vaccine mandates for workers at businesses with 100 or more employees. And basically what's going to happen there, and that's the biggest piece of news, is that if you are a business with 100 more employees,

either your employees have to get vaccinated or they have to submit to testing on a weekly basis. In addition, requiring mandatory paid time off for those businesses so that workers can go and get the shots and recover for them. That's definitely a good thing. Also, leveraging the federal government's power with Medicare and Medicaid funding to require immunization for workforces at health facilities that take Medicare and Medicaid funding. So those are sort of the details. As I said, the big piece here that people really focused on is that mandate for businesses with 100 or more employees that says either your employees have to get vaccinated or they have to submit to a weekly coronavirus test. A little bit

about the legal justification here. We've got a New York Times tear sheet for you. So because this isn't the federal government directly requiring vaccinations, the legal justification is based on the act that established the Occupational Safety and Health Act of 1970. Essentially, there's a provision there that says that if there's something that poses a grave risk to employees, then you can require workplaces to do something about it. The way this will happen is it won't go into effect immediately. The federal government has basically sent over to OSHA this language requiring them to write up the rules. They're going to have to demonstrate that workers face a grave danger, that the rule is necessary to defuse that danger, and that it is feasible for employers to carry out.

Of course, Republican governors already losing their minds over this, threatening to sue. And, you know, I think based on a lot of the legal experts, we have a tear sheet showing just those Republican governors threatening to sue. You see Ron DeSantis there. I know Texas Governor Greg Abbott also. I think six states now. Six states. Kristi Noem, I think, got in on the act, et cetera, et cetera. No big surprise there. A lot of the legal analysis seems to indicate that he's on relatively firm footing here. But you just never know. It all depends on what the courts ultimately decide, Zogger. No, you're right.

And this is a very, I mean, this is a deep fine that they would be imposing. So this, per the New York Times, $13,650 fine for a violation, $136,500 for those that are willful or repeated. And it's a very dicey territory. Now, I actually had thought that the law might be illegal. But after we talked yesterday, I went back and I looked and you're right, which is that under OSHA, they have an emergency temporary standard that they can adhere to. And as long as the process goes through an administrative review, as per the Administration Procedures Act, as long as they don't screw up like the Trump administration often used to do. Don't get me started on that one. People may be slightly more competent.

Correct. Then what they have to do is the law will go into effect, essentially. But then it will, of course, get kicked to the courts. Now, look, in terms of whether it passes judicial muster or not, it's complicated. Justice Roberts, John Roberts, actually struck down the past administration for not adhering specifically to that act and going through the exact legal motions. So as long as the Biden administration— That was on the census and as well on DACA. So on those particular cases, the standard has basically been set, right? So what it would mean here is that if the Biden administration does dot all of its I's and cross its T's, that this very might well could be legal.

Of course, given the court and the makeup of that, it is very difficult to tell. And so if you're one of those Republicans who's outraged about this, I would not necessarily bank on the illegality or whatever. I had no idea. And I admit, this is what makes me deeply uncomfortable. I did not know the government could basically do this. And the way that I've seen some of the defense is like, well, it's not technically a vaccine mandate. It's like, yeah, well, what business on earth wants to give you paid time off to be able to go and get tested all the time?

Because the paid time off, it doesn't just apply to people for recovering from the shot. If you're one of those employees or one of those businesses who had an employee where you didn't have one who wanted to get vaccinated, it basically becomes a cost on you because you have to keep giving them PTO to go get tested every couple of days. So it's kind of a de facto mandate. Well, some of those rules, it will depend on how it's written by OSHA. But I will tell you, and we'll get into more of, you know, what I think about what you think about it and the politics of it. But that is part of what makes me a lot more comfortable with this because it's not actually a direct vaccine mandate. I think what I've always said is there's a balance here between two competing principles. One is your individual rights, your civil liberties, something that's really important.

I am deeply uncomfortable with the idea of starting to, you know, fire people en masse who are unwilling to get vaccinated. On the other hand, we live in a society together and we have a responsibility to one another. And choosing not to get vaccinated is not a costless decision for the people around you. So for me, the way that this has been presented, and again, we'll see how it's written up ultimately by OSHA and how it's implemented, what it looks like in the business community once they actually implement it. The way this was written up balances those two principles really well because you're saying to people, look, you don't want to get vaccinated? That's fine. Submit to a test every week. That seems to me to be the best possible way of striking that balance between, listen, I think everybody should get vaccinated.

But if you decide for whatever reason you don't want to, you're not going to get fired. You have another alternative to pursue. To me, that's why this thing ultimately makes sense. I will say on the legal piece, I'll just throw this one more layer on top of here. Biden seems totally like almost like bring it on in terms of the legal fight. And I think also the political fight on this. Here was his response to a question about those Republican governors planning to sue. Are pulling your vaccine requirements an overreach? You are granted the challenge in court. Have at it. Look, I am so disappointed that particularly some Republican governors have been so cavalier with the health of these kids, so cavalier with the health of their communities. I think part of the problem there, Crystal, which is that kind of forceful attitude.

And look, Trump did many of the same things. Biden is very much leaning into that style of politics. This is part of what I worry about the most, which is, as you said, look, if it really does get implemented that way, then I think you'd be OK. But what I worry about the most is what United Airlines is doing. They're like, look, you're fired unless you get vaccinated by September 13. And then, look, I get it, flight attendance, a little bit different, but then at the same time, like transmission in the air, not necessarily the same thing. I think that really what it comes down to, it's all about affect. And in that speech that he declared at the very top, the pandemic of these people are,

you know, it was very much like an articulation of a declaration of war, at least the way that I saw it. And a lot of people did. And when if you're going to use that affect and then the full force of the law, I just worry. Look, I think we're shredding social trust even more so ultimately. And look, I'm not saying that coronavirus isn't terrible and hasn't killed a lot of people and so much more. But we have a vaccine. It will protect you from hospitalization and death by and large. And if you don't want to get it, then that's your choice. And you could make the decision to say, okay, so be it. We're going to move on from here. And that, or at the very least, lean more into the

incentive programs. And look, some incentives are not always going to work, but this whole war footing by the president, by the administration, then using the full force of the law, that is what I worry about the most. And it's not even about civil liberties necessarily. It's like the affect of it. I mean, I saw organic outrage on this at a scale that I'd never seen in a really long time.

To your point, though, that we were talking previously, it did kind of fizzle out over 9-11. A lot of people, they make a lot of noise about something. Will this really be something? One tell to me was that Governor Asa Hutchinson, who is Arkansas, much more of like a bit more of a libertarian type, but in the Republican coalition, seen very much as a squish, like somebody who's going to go along, whatever. Even he is against it. So I see this totally united in terms of the political party. And it's about to become now some sort of like culture war issue where I'm like, look, if your ultimate goal is getting vaccinated, I just don't think that this is going to be the right thing to do. We've covered that Kaiser Family Foundation poll.

Yeah. About 40% of workers said they would quit if there's a vaccine mandate. Right. Yeah. But again, they don't have to get the vaccine. They can get tested. And so, and here's the thing is, look, I just don't think that it's arguable that it won't work, right? We can argue about whether the trade-offs are worth it. That's a reasonable argument, but we've already seen federal government agencies have had a similar either get vaccinated or get tested regime in place. They're seeing a lot of people get vaccinated. It has increased the number of vaccinations. You can also look overseas.

In France, they put in much more stringent vaccine, actual vaccine mandates, not just for workplaces, but also just to be able to go out to dinner and things like that. It's worked. A lot more people have gotten vaccinated. Very true. and things like that, it's worked. A lot more people have gotten vaccinated. This is part of why the U.S. is now lagging behind almost every other developed country in terms of vaccination rates at this point. And it's lagging behind almost every other developed country in terms of these types of vaccine requirements. So I don't really think it's arguable that it doesn't work. I think we can talk about the trade-offs and that's a reasonable debate here. Listen, to me, the politics of this also are pretty clear. And I think this is why he's so sort of confident. I would dispute that his speech, I saw a lot of hand-wringing about the

language in his speech. I would dispute that this was any sort of like the war on the unvaccinated type of approach. The things that I find completely abhorrent are these people, Leanna Wen, who's saying like, you should be barred from going out in public at all. Right. The people, this is the one. You don't ever run to interstate travel.

Right, don't ever. Exactly. The doctor we keep talking about went on MSNBC and was like, do I even care if they're unvaccinated? Like, to me, that is psychopathic. It's completely out of bounds. And the whole attitude of contempt, judgment towards the unvaccinated, I have

absolutely no use for. I didn't think that he got to that in that speech. I think that he stated the facts. Look, this group of people, unvaccinated people, are creating risks for all of us. That's just factually accurate. Mostly themselves. It's just true, but for all of us. And look, I mean, there is a cost when, especially knowing now how common breakthrough infections are, there's a huge cost for people in terms of getting sick, having to quarantine for two weeks, loss of being able to work. And especially, listen, if you're a white collar worker, it's one thing. If you're a blue collar worker, if you're a service worker, that can completely upend your life in and of itself. So there are tremendous costs that are being imposed on vaccinated people by the unvaccinated, and that's not to like shame them or say you're

terrible people and you should be shunned and denied medical care and all of that. That's just the facts of the matter. And there are, in fact, instances now where the ICU beds are so full in states like Alabama that people are actually being denied critical care. There's a story just down about a man in Alabama who was having an in-distress cardiac arrest. And there was no ICU bed available for him within like 200 miles. And he died. So these are real costs that are, in in fact being imposed. I don't think that it goes too far just to state that simple fact. On the politics of it, we haven't gotten

any polling yet on the specifics of Biden's moves here, but we had some late August polling asking people, how do you feel about requiring vaccines, which is even again, further than what Biden's doing, but requiring vaccines for people who were working in person. We can throw that. This is CBS News up on the screen. So a majority supports that. Those are the numbers at the top. It might be a little bit hard to see, but a bare majority supports that. And only 26 percent are opposed. The remaining 23 percent are undecided. So listen, at this point in this country, you've got about 70% of eligible adults who have gotten at least one shot. The unvaccinated are in a decided minority. Then you take from that group the people who are really hardcore against this direction, I think Biden and the Democrats feel like they are on very solid political footing at this point. And I think they're calculating that whatever backlash they receive here, ultimately, the thing that people really care about is how is the pandemic going,

period. Like, you know, even if there was a backlash, but the pandemic got under control and you were seeing better results and people are feeling more optimistic, I think they believe that politically that's a better state of affairs. I think you're right. And I think the bigger issue, and you know, look, we have a very diverse audience here. Yeah. And what I had heard, you know, specifically, and I think this is a very legitimate question, is around natural immunity. Now we've seen a lot of different studies that have come out. Natural immunity may even give you more of a protection against coronavirus than a vaccine. That is not me saying go out and get coronavirus. If you haven't had it, getting a vaccine is still a pretty good idea. Yes, you may still get it, but again, overall, in the aggregate, number one on symptoms, number two on in the aggregate, it will reduce your

chance of infection and of spreading that infection critically. So all of that together. That being said, they clearly didn't think about it at all. And this is probably one of those things where you see them with their one-size-fits-all solution, a size-fits-all solution I generally agree with, but are not really willing to engage as much with some of the counters, which I do think are important. To me, it's all about trust. You got to gain people's trust. This is one of the most common questions. And Dr. Fauci did not have an answer to this when he was out there defending the vaccine, you know, not mandate, whatever, whatever the Biden administration policy is. Sanjay Gupta actually pressed him on it on CNN. Let's take a listen to that. There was a study that came out of Israel about natural immunity.

And basically, the headline was that natural immunity provides a lot of protection even better than the vaccines alone. What are people to make of that? So as we talk about vaccine mandates, I get calls all the time, people say I've already had COVID, I'm protected, and now the study says maybe even more protected than the vaccine alone. Should they also get the vaccine? How do you make the case to them? You know, that's a really good point, Sanjay. I don't have a really firm answer for you on that. I think they do need to have an answer on that. That's actually a critical one in particular. And you know, if you're somebody who's had COVID, not vaccinated, then maybe it should be different than somebody who's completely unvaccinated. Again, and you got to have answers to these questions. You're going to have such a wide swath. Now, look, I think you're right, which is that as long as people aren't

getting fired, I'm not as uncomfortable with it. The moment I start to see mass firings, I'm really worried because I think we already saw there was a hospital which had to pause deliveries of babies because they have many nurses who are not vaccinated and refuse to do it. Yeah, but you know what? In a hospital setting, get the freaking vaccine. I don't disagree. Honestly, I mean- Especially in nursing homes. That one is like- Nursing homes, hospital, you're dealing with newborn babies here. I mean, come on, right?

Again, I agree with you. If we had a hard vaccine mandate at every workplace across this country, and you're seeing mass findings, we know who that would disproportionately impact. It's the working class, right? Working class, at this point, mostly working class white people. But we're talking about lower income people who are disproportionately impacted. And that's something to really strongly consider and be very concerned about. If you work in a hospital, if you work in a nursing home, if you work in a school, yes, I think you should be required to get a vaccine at this point. So it's going to be interesting to see how all of this plays out. On the natural immunity thing, if you've had COVID and the studies do show that it provides you with a high level of immunity equivalent or even superior to a vaccine, it's probably just

would be hard to implement. It would be. Right. Because you don't get like, you know, you get your little vaccine passport showing your dates. But I guess you'd have to start distributing like, I've had COVID passports. We could do antibody tests. Right? You can do antibodies. But again, I don't even really want this sort of immunity passport type thing. But if we're going to go in that direction, I do actually think that's probably what you're at.

They should have some sort of answer, though. I completely agree. They have to have an answer. You can't just say like, oh, well, whatever. I mean, that's millions and millions of people. We actually have no idea. I mean, I never reported my case to the government. There's a lot of people who are just like me. Yeah, don't come after me, by the way. Yeah. Okay. All right. At the same time, so we'll continue to track that one. At the same time, really revelatory documents being released here by

the Biden administration with regards to 9-11 and Saudi. I've become quite obsessed over the last couple of weeks, just kind of revisiting 9-11 over the last 20 years. And one of the parts that will always get me is the Saudi connection and a lot of the questions around the Saudi Arabian involvement. I'll say at the top, like, look, there is still to this date no evidence that the highest levels, and I say the highest levels, of the Saudi government were involved in this plot. If anything, they hated bin Laden just as much as we did. But here's the question.

What about the lower level ones? And those documents were held very tightly by the Bush administration. The Obama administration vetoed that bill that was pushed to the U.S. Senate, which would allow 9-11 families in order to sue the Saudi Arabian government. Then the Trump administration refused to declassify a further number of documents. Biden, in occurrence with the 20th anniversary, ordered them declassified. We covered this about two weeks ago. Well, we got our very first one. So let's put this up there on the screen. And this is very important because what it does is that the first declassified 9-11 document by the FBI also includes a memo. Now, within the memo, the FBI actually point to it and say definitively that it now shows no Saudi conspiracy. So let's

put that, Zero Hedge actually is the one who spotted this. Let's put that up there on the screen, that tweet. And what he points to there is that the FBI's kind of introductory memo, which was written in 2016, says it puts to bed any doubts about Saudi complicity. However, that is not even remotely true. Because what you can actually see within the document is that it details even further the Saudi official Omar al-Bayoumi, who was in California and actually helped two of the 9-11 hijackers both secure a boarding house, a place to stay. He claims that he just ran into them while he was at, yeah, okay. Also, Mr. Bayoumi, get this, was a grad student who never went to school, had no discernible source of funds, and just happened to be in California next to the 9-11 hijackers. That seems legit.

I have a lot of questions. They've also tracked the way he was, in fact, receiving all of these payments from all these Saudi-run firms and not showing up to actually do any work but still getting paid. And these two hijackers, they didn't speak any English. No, exactly. It was Midhar and Hazmi. They spoke zero English. And he was their shepherd. Right.

And they were the first two to arrive here in the United States. Right. And what people who encountered them at the time said is that there was no way they could have navigated around America without help. Bayoumi just happens to meet them immediately upon their arrival, happens to provide financial support to them as well, and basically shepherd them around. And then why this is important is because he had direct connections to at least Saudi consular officials and was being paid backdoor by the Saudi government. So effectively, it looks very much like Mr. Bayoumi was Saudi intelligence operational on the ground here doing something,

doing something and just happened to become really besties with these two 9-11 hijackers. The new memo also cites an FBI source who said Biomi held, quote, very high status at the Saudi consulate in L.A. So at the time, they tried to portray him as, oh, he was barely anybody, didn't even know him. Here's what they said. He had, quote, even higher than many of the Saudi persons in charge of the diplomatic mission, strongly suggesting that he was an intelligence agent

running a covert op on U.S. soil. So that is what is inside the new 9-11 document. And I knew when it was going to come out that it was almost certainly going to concern al-Bayoumi. Really what it is, is that there are so many questions on 9-11 which remain completely unanswered. Lawrence Wright, who wrote The Looming Tower, which is my favorite book, on 9-11, he gave an interview that I was watching this weekend in which, you know, the exact reason why the CIA never put Nawaz al-Hazmi and Khalid al-Midhar on an FBI watch list still today is unclear. Wow. And by that, I mean they covered it up. Wow. that, I mean, they covered it up. Still, 20 years later, we do not have an official

justification as to why a CIA cable, which recognized that these two gentlemen had visas to the United States in 2000, were not given over to the FBI. We don't have the names of those people. We don't know who was responsible. Over 50 people read that CIA cable while it was inside of their system nobody the FBI was notified now look is there a question could the FBI have even tracked him down would have been hard look it was 2000 like it wasn't exactly the same situation but maybe I mean what if we tried there are so many of these bureaucratic messes and to day, not one person inside the CIA was ever fired because of 9-11. Well, and I mean, it's just clear that for decades, the connections to Saudi officials have been covered up.

And that's the 9-11, Families United, Terry Estrada, they put on a statement with a very different assessment of this document than the government's official assessment of like, who can say whether there were Saudi connections here? Let's go ahead and throw that statement up on the screen, or at least a portion of it. They say, now the Saudi secrets are exposed and it is well past time for the kingdom to own up to its officials' roles in murdering thousands on American soil. Of course, the Saudi government says they welcome this declassification, and of course they had absolutely nothing to do with it. But if there's one thing that's clear about the way that people have been lied to over these many years, I think this document shows you the way that bipartisan administrations, Bush, Obama, Trump, worked to cover up some of these connections to Saudi officials who

were at least in contact routinely with some of these hijackers. It still just shows what a joke the 9-11 Commission is. And, you know, I'm doing my entire monologue on kind of a retrospective on how terrible, actually, that the Bush administration screwed up the response to 9-11 and then drove us into the war in Iraq. And on the 20th anniversary, it really is so important that we still try to get to the bottom of this because it's just like what we're experiencing now with the Wuhan stuff. You know, actually, yesterday was the two-year anniversary to date that the database at the Wuhan Institute of

Virology was just miraculously taken off, which had described the bat and rat pathogens that they happened to have there. Oh, it's just gone, you know, because of cybersecurity threats is what they claim. Oh, and then all of a sudden, you know, you start to see all kinds of crazy little infections pop up in 2019, just a month after this entire incident. Are we ever going to get to the bottom of it? Or is it going to like this our crystalline saga 20 years from now going to be doing a segment the lies and the cover-ups president donald trump jr god god help us has declassified or no president baron at that time baron trump at that time has declassified a document i got a little bit of hope for baron i think he would declassify he's very tall you know he's got a lot of energy so i, I mean, you go and it's like, are we going to be doing segments 20 years from now on like TikTok or whatever,

on Chinese Global since they rule the world about how they, you know, oh, the Wuhan Institute of Virology and somebody's declassified this document. That's what it feels like. It's just, it's so crazy to me. That's all of these, all this information, all of these documents and more, completely covered up. And that they covered it up intentionally so that we could go to war in Iraq. Well, and that's it. And this is actually a good segue to the next segment.

15 of the 19 hijackers were from Saudi. Remember that. And somehow we end up at war in Iraq. Yeah. And bin Laden's hiding out in Afghanistan. They offer to turn him over, and we're like, nah, we're good. Now we're good. Well, we're feeling so hubristic that we thought we can crush the Taliban, remake Afghanistan, spread democracy, all of this nonsense. And of course, by the way, secure lots of military wealth and trillions upon trillions

of dollars in fees for military contractors and military industrial complex. It is such a crime that has been committed to this country, what has been done to these people, the surveillance that was justified, the breach of civil liberties that will never be ruled back that was justified by all of this. The complete destabilization of an entire region. The fact that we made ourselves so much less safe. We helped to generate new terrorist groups. We made the Taliban more powerful than they've ever been before. ISIS. That's the real legacy. And every year when 9-11 rolls around, I think to myself, if we had done nothing in response, we would have been infinitely better off and the world would have been infinitely better off than the actions that George W. Bush caused us to take. Hey, so remember how we told you how awesome premium membership was? Well, here we are again to remind you that becoming a premium member means you don't have to listen to

our constant pleas for you to subscribe. So what are you waiting for? Become a premium member today by going to breakingpoints.com, which you can click on in the show notes. Well, that's a great little segue, isn't it? To our former fearless leader, George W. Bush. Everybody gave such a hailed speech at the 9-11 memorial in Shanksville, Pennsylvania, where United 93 went down. And look, I will admit, you know, anytime this man opens his mouth, I just want to, you know, want him to shut up. And I can't think, but help, but think exactly what you were just talking about, Crystal, about the damage that he wrought upon this country. And I'll be going into a lot of that more in my monologue. But here's what he had to say, which caused all of MSNBC and the blue check liberal crowd in order to love what was going on. Let's

take a listen. As a nation, our adjustments have been profound. Many Americans struggled to understand why an enemy would hate us with such zeal. The security measures incorporated into our lives are both sources of comfort and reminders of our vulnerability. And we have seen growing evidence that the dangers to our country can come not only across borders, but from violence that gathers within. There is little cultural overlap between violent extremists abroad and violent extremists at home. But in their disdain for pluralism, in their disregard for human life, in their determination to defile national symbols. They are children of the same foul spirit,

and it is our continuing duty to confront them. When it comes to the unity of America, those days seem distant from our own. Malign force seems at work in our common life that turns every disagreement into an argument and every argument into a clash of cultures. So much of our politics has become a naked appeal to anger, fear, and resentment. That leaves us worried about our nation and our future together. I come without explanations or solutions. I can only tell you what I've seen. I can't. It's hearing the man most responsible for the conditions of where we are, hearing the person who used our righteous anger on 9-11 to draw us into war in Iraq. It's like, it makes me sick the fact that people take him seriously. And this isn't a

joke. Glenn, as usual, go ahead and put this up there, this tweet, where we have the fawning over George W. Bush's speech. They love him. I mean, the way that they discuss Bill Clinton says, thank you, my friend, for your powerful and much needed words on this day. Keith Olbermann, whose entire career was built on calling out the lies of this man, says even George W. Bush now recognizes Trump and those who directly participate in the 1-6-Q are terrorists, surely as the 9-11 ones were. I'll say it again, Trump damaged America in a way bin Laden only dreamed of. Then, Jamali Jang fast, he got us Trump, but he's also right about Trump. And then, finally, Michael Beskloss, who, you know, one of those presidential historians who just happens to always agree with the media, says,

almost weeping, President George W. Bush rebukes those Americans who have turned their backs on the America I know. The America that he knows is gone. And you know why? It's because of him. It's like the complicity. And look, I know he seems like a nice guy, but personal affect does not matter. What you do in office matters more than anything. There's no doubt in my mind he's probably the worst president that we've had since James Buchanan. And even then he can probably give him a run for his money. And to see him resuscitated, and even worse, draw some connection between January 6th and then 9-11, and on top of that, Crystal, justify the security measures of the Patriot Act and the civil liberties infringements that were foisted upon us in the post-9-11 age. What he's doing is declaring and pushing a new war on domestic terror. That's exactly right. Full circle.

All of the sins of him and his administration and his cronies erased. They've whitewashed the war on terror and are now using this pre-Texas 1-6 to wage a new war on terror, this time directly on our own civilians. I mean, listen, in some ways, the nice ones are way more dangerous. Yeah. Way more dangerous because I despise Donald Trump. I think he was a horrible president. I think he did a lot of terrible things to this country and to the world. There's no comparison. Bush, what he did was orders of magnitude worse. The lies, hundreds of thousands, possibly up to a million lives lost in that region because of him.

The surveillance that has been foisted, the massive executive power grab that will never be rolled back by any president, the lies about the wars, the lies about the surveillance, all of that because of him. Not to mention the tax cuts for rich people. Not to mention the building up to the complete financial collapse that destroyed the entire middle class of America. Free trade. Yeah, I mean, all of it, all of it,

what he was able to do, destabilized an entire region, fed more terrorism, created more terrorists. It's insane that anyone could look at this man and say, let's hear what he has to say, and then go beyond that and be like, oh, that was amazing. He's so wise. He's so great. Even he understands how bad Trump was. The Olbermann one is really particularly galling. Because as you said, I mean, he really made his name, built his career on understanding actually how bad that dude was and how horrific and how evil his actions were in terms of what he did to us and did to the world, to stand there and give this speech and be like, well, I don't have any

answers. I don't know what happened. You happened. I have the answer for you. You happened. And him and all of his cronies who now get trotted out on cable news, Nicole Wallace with her two hours on MSNBC, potential heir apparent to Rachel Maddow's hour possibly. All of these people resuscitated, their crimes erased. And we wonder why our politics are so screwed up and why the mass of Americans hate you so much. That's the other piece of this, is all of the blame, none of it is pointed at elites, right? It's all like, oh, the American people, they've turned their back on what we're supposed to be about. No, you all did this to us. You did this to us. You know, it's funny. You know, guess who anchored NBC News' coverage of 9-11? It was Nicole Wallace and Brian Williams. So two liars,

actually. But one of them happens to be the bigger liar, and that's Nicole Wallace and Brian Williams. So two liars, actually. But one of them happens to be the bigger liar, and that's Nicole Wallace, who helped sell the war in Iraq and worked for W. Bush during that time. I couldn't believe it. And she was like relaying anecdotes about her time in the White House and what it was like for her. And I'm just sitting there like boiling with rage. Same time, they have Condoleezza Rice on to, I kid you not, talk about maternal mortality rates in Afghanistan. And I'm like, yeah, as you care so much. How'd the mortality rate in Iraq work out in Baghdad? When you have an answer and you will finally be held for account for that, I will happy to be sit with you.

It's funny, though, Crystal. The reason we're spending so much time on this during our show is I realize our audience is very young. Some of them may not remember. And it's one of those things where like, yeah, 9-11, that was crazy. And then the war in Iraq, like that was crazy. It wasn't just crazy. It wasn't inevitable. These were deliberate choices that were made by these people that ruined, and I really mean ruined both my childhood and this country. Like they ruined any of the promise that we had in the 2000s.

They squandered our wealth abroad. They squandered, you know, the goodwill and the righteous anger of people post 9-11. They dealt a blow to millions and also penalized their working class here at home. Like the damage they have done is incalculable. And it's like, maybe that's, I just want to try to explain people why we are so angry because you have to understand there were two paths and the path that they took us down to get us Trump and

all this other craziness in our politics, who do you think is responsible? It was him. And it was the people who worked for him, the people that he empowered. And then to see the same people in the media who helped sell us the war in Iraq, and then who didn't ever held them to question, and who still respect them. That's actually the worst part.

It's just, it all just shows you how corrupt and filthy the entire system is. It's like, even I can't believe it anymore. They fed our servicemen and women into a meat grinder for two days. They didn't care about them. The toll that was exacted on those families, not just through loss of lives, not just through loss of limbs, but the lost time with your family, missing the births, missing the deaths, missing the birthdays, all of those things. PTSD, too.

The PTSD. I mean, the number of veterans who are committing suicide every day. It's an epidemic. These people, very few of them served. Very few of them send their sons and daughters to fight and die in these needless wars. So it is completely disgusting. And the way that the media has rehabilitated them, celebrates them. Oh, isn't it cute?

George W. Bush and Michelle Obama are friends. Isn't that sweet? Isn't that really the best of America? Everybody come together. No, this bipartisan consensus around these wars was evil. It was evil. And it did so much damage. And we can never forget who was culpable.

And listen, I think, you know, the idea of ever holding them to account is far past. And that's another whole issue. The fact that elites, when they commit crimes, never, not only do they not face any sort of like punishment or have to have any accountability, but they're celebrated. They're celebrated. You make more money. That was what was so disgusting. He was the only president, current or former, who spoke on 9-11. Everybody else chose to observe in silence, and this is what we got from him. It's unbelievable. Unbelievable.

That's actually a perfect segue. Yeah. Speaking of elite crimes, the one thing that Biden kind of was celebrated for in the withdrawal from Afghanistan was this drone strike that supposedly hit an ISIS-K target in retribution for their attack on our servicemen and women and innocent Afghan civilians. Well, there were, from the jump, a lot of questions about whether they really hit anyone related to ISIS. And very quickly, there started to be reports of large civilian casualties, at least seven up to ten, including babies. I mean, little Afghan children. York Times dug in and actually went on the ground and figured out who was it that our military, that in this drone strike, was actually killed. And turns out, lo and behold, the supposed ISIS-K

terrorist that they targeted was a 14-year employee of the Nutrition and Education International, a U.S. NGO that fights malnutrition. His name is Ahmadi. Let's throw this first tweet up on the screen. Evan Hill, I mean, phenomenal journalism here. Phenomenal journalism. Went to the house, spoke to the family, tracked the security cameras that watched Mr. Ahmadi over the day go to his job distributing aid to poor people who were without food, picking up his colleagues, filling his car with water canisters that he could bring home to his family. And what Evan says here, the final act of the U.S. war in Afghanistan was a drone strike in Kabul that killed 10 people. And ultimately, our latest investigation shows

how a man the military saw as a, quote, imminent threat and ISIS facilitator was actually an aid worker returning to his family. When he pulled his white Toyota Corolla into his family's courtyard, his children ran out to greet him and to jump into the car. That's when the drone strike hit, murdering him and children in his family and extended family. Here's some of the detail that the New York Times, Evan Hill was able to gather. Let's show this video, which shows, so the military claimed that he was picking up explosive material, loading his car down with explosive material.

They even lied and said, we know that it was explosive material because there were secondary explosions that proved, and that's what really killed the civilians here. All complete lies. There were no secondary explosions. The civilians were directly killed, murdered by this drone strike. And you can see the security camera footage here that reveals Mr. Ahmadi loading his car with water to take to his home where they were facing a water shortage. Let's take a look at that. At 2.35 p.m., Ahmadi pulls out a hose,

and then he and a co-worker fill empty containers with water. Earlier that morning, we saw Ahmadi bring these same empty plastic containers to the office. And the military never would say who they hit. Yes. They admitted to the New York Times. They didn't even know who it was. But this drone tracked him for eight hours as he went about his day, picking up his colleagues, going to his office. They described his office as an unknown compound. And it was really just an aid worker office. And so they follow him around and then they killed this guy that they even admit they didn't even know who he was. It's such a crime and unfortunately so typical of what was done in Afghanistan and Iraq and throughout the

region year after year after year, president after president after president. And yet the thing they want Biden to resign for is his withdrawal from Afghanistan. Not any of this. You gotta love that one. And this is the thing. This has been happening for over 10 years. The drone war that Obama lit up in 2009, there have been reports like this forever. Nobody cared. Literally nobody. I mean, I think it was the Intercept and antiwar.org that would report some of this stuff. But that was it. It's like people in the media, they're like, yeah, whatever. So this is the thing, like they'll punish you. And look, rightfully so when the time comes, whenever it goes against their narrative. But this has been a feature of the U.S. war on terror in the tribal regions of Pakistan

and Afghanistan and Yemen and now for a long time. And look, I'm not some like Howard Zinn liberal, but what I'm saying is that one of the issues is that the superior precision technology that they like to talk about is only as good as the intelligence that you have in order to strike. And if you don't have good intelligence, then your bomb is worse than useless,

like in this particular case. And that's the issue that we've had is that, like, based on pretty sketchy intelligence, we have had a process which was actually written by Obama which allowed the use of not just lethal force but lethal force with noncombatants who are around in order to be used with very little retrospective. I was reading yesterday about bin Laden's son Hamza. They're like, the US believes they killed him sometime in 2017, but never got confirmation. I'm like, how does that work? So you think you did it? Kind of? Who was there? What happened? I mean, all of this is being done in your and my name in order to protect you and me.

We need to have a lot more visibility. And Obama, this is the real thing, is that he brought in all this fake legalese about these processes. Like, oh, well, I am the decider, and I have this entire 40-page memo that you have to go through. And I'm like, that doesn't change the fact that it's clearly not working, number one. And number two, there's still a lot of screw-ups. Is there any process in which, where is the church committee or something like that of Congress, which has looked into any of this?

Look, maybe it'll come, but I doubt it. Even if it did, oh, there's one strike. They won't look at the whole thing. Yeah, and all these people who claim to care about Afghan civilians. Oh, they don't care. Please. I mean, we drone-striked hospitals. We drone-striked weddings. I remember that hospital.

This is nothing new. Let's even say that he had been ISIS-K, which it looks pretty definitively like he was a U.S. aid worker who, by the way, working for a California-based aid organization who, by the way, he and his family had applied for Afghan refugee resettlement to come here. I mean, these were pro-American Afghans, our allies, and we murdered them and their babies,

okay? That's what happened here. But even if he had been ISIS-K, you're going to do this in the middle of a, this was a residential neighborhood in a densely packed area of Kabul, like just so that Biden could try to avoid a bad news cycle of him saying that he was weak. They had to go out and bomb something so that they could say we got the bad guys. And this is the reality of what actually happened here. And again, from the very jump, we knew this thing was suspicious

because they wouldn't say. If they really got some high-level ISIS-K target, they'd be crawling from the rooftops about, here's the guy and here's what he did and here's what he looks like and all of this stuff. Wouldn't say. There were two different strikes. Wouldn't say who they ultimately got.

I'm very curious also about that other strike and who they actually took out. I can tell you. I covered the Pentagon. I covered a lot of high-value strikes. They always name the target whenever it's a high-value target. Yes. Always. And if they don't name the target, they're a lot more descriptive.

So this time they tried to do the whole explosions. There'll be like an ISIS oil refinery in the city. Here's the video. Here's the proof of why it was. On this one, it was a what? Two-paragraph statement? Yeah. ISIS, you know, Pentagon has committed an ISIS-K attack, like, why it was. On this one, it was a, what, two-paragraph statement? ISIS, you know, Pentagon has committed an ISIS-K attack, imminent, whatever. No details, no clarifications.

Here's the thing. They lied to us. 100% lied. There's also still no admission yet from the Pentagon that they screwed up. Nope. And guarantee you, there won't be. They'll just try to bury it. They'll bury it.

They'll do, like, we're going to kick it. Oh, we're doing an investigation. Exactly. They'll kick it to the inspector general or whatever, and you're going to get some fake report in, like, nine years that will eventually be declassified. And by that point, who the hell knows what will be going on. This is a feature, not a bug, of the last 10 years of the war on terror. And that's, again, this is all being done in your name. You should really think about and about what we let them get away with over the last 10 to 15 years. And a lot of these attacks do not hold up over scrutiny. And again, I would love to see some

ISIS guy with a suicide bomb get blown up. But here's the thing, like you got to be sure because otherwise, what are you doing? I mean, we killed a USAID worker and his kids. But here's the thing. Like, you got to be sure because otherwise, what are you doing? I mean, we killed a U.S. aid worker and his kids. That's not a joke. You know, 20 years ago, that's enough to get fired in the military. That's enough in order to prompt like a real investigation. Now they're just like, yeah, whatever. Whatever. I mean, they're counting on the news cycle to move on and it will. Which it will. And you know, yeah, years down the road, if there is actually any sort of investigation, it'll be too late for it to matter or for anyone to care. Just remember, when we talk about the war on terror, this is what it was. This is what it was.

When they want to revive this, resuscitate it, rehab it, and apply it again out of our citizens, no. No. I mean, this is literally what we're talking about. So do not fall for it. The war on terror was nothing but an atrocity. It was horrific. It was terrible for us. It was terrible for the Afghans. It was terrible for Iraqis. It was terrible for Syrians.

It was terrible for that entire region. It's done. All it has done is made us less safe. And by the way, murdered hundreds of thousands of people in the meantime. So we are not going down that road again. All right. Okay, another topic. Depressing news. Yeah. So more depressing news for you. We've been tracking closely, of course, where Democrats are with this $3.5 trillion proposed reconciliation bill. You'll recall a lot of progressive priorities in here, but also things that are supported by a

lot of people, bipartisan on a bipartisan basis. In this package, things like universal pre-K, things like universal community college, paid family leave, elder care, expanding Medicare. There's a lot of things in here that have broad bipartisan support. So, of course, the big fly in the ointment has been Joe Manchin, who keeps coming out and posturing and saying he's not going to support anything like $3.5 trillion. Here's his latest contribution to the conversation. Leader Chuck Schumer says he's moving, quote, full speed ahead with this package. Will he have your vote? And that's fine. He can't. He will not have my vote on 3.5. And Chuck knows that. And we've talked about this.

We've already put out $5.4 trillion, and we've tried to help Americans in every way we possibly can. And a lot of the help that we put out there is still there, and it's going to run clear until next year, 2022. What's the urgency? What's the urgency that we have? Now, I should say, Manchin is the most vocal because it's the most politically beneficial for him to be vocal. But he is not the only Democrat. Oh, a lot of them feel this way. Especially on some of the tax increases. I'm going to get to the latest revelations on what they're planning on doing with regards to taxes in a minute. But this is developing into a bit of a war of words and posturing between Manchin and Bernie Sanders, who really crafted this bill.

He's, of course, chair of the Senate Budget Committee and put a lot of these provisions together and has been one of the front men in terms of pushing this forward. Let's take a listen to his response to Joe Manchin. First, your colleague, Joe Manchin, just explicitly told me repeatedly he will not support your $3.5 trillion reconciliation bill. He wants to see something more in the ballpark of $1.5 trillion. Is that acceptable to you? No, it is absolutely not acceptable to me. I don't think it's acceptable to the president, to the American people, or to the overwhelming majority of the people in the Democratic caucus. Look. So look, Bernie feels like they already compromised going from six trillion to three and a half trillion. The big question is, is Manchin,

you know, really going to dig in his heels here? Or is he posturing for what he thinks are his, you know, political interests back home and is ultimately going to yield and give them something that'll be acceptable? I kind of do think he's going to dig their heels in, Crystal. And oh, another thing is that he remembered Josh Gottheimer, one of the things that the moderate so-called got was a deadline to vote by the end of September. And in that same interview, Manchin said, absolutely not. It's not, no way. And Fry asked around, there's not enough Senate time in order to make sure that happened.

They are back this week, so we'll probably have more news on that. But then they're out of session again. So we got to remember that all of this is about a drag out game. And what the Manchin, Sinema, moderate types want, they want that bipartisan infrastructure bill to pass. But they do not want to vote for this bill. And so they are doing everything in their power in order to make it so that eventually Pelosi and everybody else compromise and goes, okay, fine, we'll just pass this bipartisan bill. So this actually really does put the ball in AOC and the progressives' court, as well as Bernie. Are they actually going to hold up?

It's a hard line. So, I mean, you should tell me because I actually don't know. At the end of the day, I do think that Manchin and Sinema actually are digging in their heels because when they say $3.5 trillion is not acceptable, it's not the spending. It's that they don't want to also increase the taxes. So they're like, well, I could if it was all paid for. But you come to the pay-fors, they're not for them whatsoever. That's the issue. So in terms of the taxes that they're actually cool with, we are talking about about $1.5 trillion that they're saying that they

would be okay with. So that being said, given they've drawn one hard line and they've also done the other on the taxes, the ball really is in Bernie and then the four progressives in the House. Are you actually going to vote down the bill, which would, frankly, guarantee zero infrastructure package because then the bipartisan one would also fail? Yeah, because while the bipartisan infrastructure bill had a lot of Republican support in the Senate, that support has melted away. Exactly. So you're talking about you may get like eight to ten Republicans who vote with you in the House, which means if you have a group, a block of a similar block of progressives who are willing to vote no, then you're able to kill the whole thing. You're able to actually have leverage in this process. Now, they say, and I talked to Ro Khanna recently, they say the entire progressive caucus has committed to voting no.

We'll see. But where this gets squishy, very squishy fast, is they haven't explicitly defined what their red line is. And what Roe kind of said is that they're really kind of looking to Bernie for guidance on that. Now, even that is like, I'm sure Roe and some others may be looking to Bernie and the rest of the Progressive Caucus. Who knows? But that's where it starts to get squishy is their line has been no climate, no deal. Well, what does that mean, right? What are you willing to actually accept? Is it a dollar value?

Is it like if it's below $2 trillion we're voting no? Is it we have to have these specific climate provisions or we're voting no? They won't say. So that's the real question. I do want to say, I mean, AOC and others have been extremely consistent. They've been very clear. They've been very consistent. We are voting no on infrastructure unless we get a sizable reconciliation package, no climate, no deal. We'll see. It's very, very revealing the way that Manchin and others go after this bill

because they don't ever attack any of the specific provisions because each specific provision is very popular, right? Who's going to oppose universal pre-K, like kids getting to go to preschool? They don't want to oppose the actual what's popular in it, the pre-K, community college, expanding Medicare, like things that are popular and also really important in a state like West Virginia, they're taking the exact same tactic that that oil lobbyist laid out and said that they would take, which is they're going to attack the pay-fors, and they're going to attack the overall price tag without getting into the details. Now, on the pay-fors, we actually have some news on this front that came out. Jeff Stein and one of his colleagues at the Washington Post got this from the Democrats on the House Ways and Means Committee.

So they're the ones who have to kind of like figure out what the tax increases are actually going to look like. So they're out with a new proposal this morning that would increase the corporate rate to 26.5 percent. That's less than Biden had originally proposed. However, they're also layering on a 3% surtax on those who are earning $5 million. Plus, the capital gains would also change to increase into 25%, which is, again, lower than what Biden ultimately proposed. But with this basket of tax changes, plus greater enforcement, plus dynamic scoring, plus some other sort of like gimmicky things, they're saying that they're getting to that $3.5 trillion line. We'll see what Manchin, Sinema, et al. respond to this

new modified proposal in terms of the tax increases. Yeah, I will be shocked if Joe Manchin goes for a 10% bump on the capital gains tax rate. That would be, I mean, that would be shocking, you know. And it just shows you who he's serving. How many West Virginians of his constituents are really worried about his capital gains tax rate? Well, his daughter, his $40 million daughter. Yeah, they're all in his family. That's exactly right. They're all in his family. They're all his relatives. The ones who live there, look, we'll see. And his social circle. That's exactly right. They're all in his family. They're all his relatives. The ones who live there. Look, we'll see. And his social circle, let's be fair.

This increasingly is becoming an absolute boondoggle. And I am convinced that it is Obamacare 2.0. Even with the popular provisions within, oh, actually, this is the other thing. Joe Manchin actually attacked the child tax credit in that same interview. He wants the means tested. That's right. I don't know if you saw that. But then that comes to the question, are the progressives willing to say, like, okay, we'll take the climate provision if you take out the child tax credit?

So it's like there's a lot of bargaining power. James Clyburn already out being like, all right, maybe not 1.5, but how about 2, right? So the bargaining that is all happening behind the scenes, I am convinced that eventually something will probably pass. It will be a morass. It will be cobbled together. Individual provisions of it will fulfill Democratic objectives, but the messaging on it will be just such a cluster that it will not give the bump that Biden needs for this.

Well, and I don't even really care about the politics of it at this point. I care about the substance of it, you know, because I think Democrats are pretty much screwed for the terms of it. Anyway, so now's the time to go big or go home because this is it. I mean, that's really, this is it in terms of the Biden administration and a legacy and changing, you know, the direction and what is possible in reality for working class people. This is the chance right now. And, you know, I've pressed Roe. I also pressed, we had Faz Shakir on Crystal Kyle and Friends, who is still an advisor to Bernie. So he's sort of privy to some of these conversations. And he claims that behind the scenes, the Biden people are playing a little more hardball

than we're seeing up front. But who knows? Who knows? We'll see where this goes. We'll see how much is posturing from Manchin and how much is reality. But I do think you're right. Certainly any hope of getting the full three and a half trillion dollar package is definitely dashed. If they get something that's in the two trillion dollar range, I think that would be a real stretch and a real win at this point. I think you're right. So we'll see. It's going the way of Obamacare,

some December 31st vote or something like that. Wow. You guys must really like listening to our voices. While I know this is annoying, instead of making you listen to a Viagra commercial, when you're done, check out the other podcast I do with Marshall Kosloff called The Realignment.

We talk a lot about the deeper issues that are changing, realigning in American society. You always need more Crystal and Sagar in your daily lives. Take care, guys. All right, Sagar, what are you looking at? Well, one general rule that I have is to never make September 11 political.

That day is reserved for remembering the people who died, the first responders, passengers, the workers in the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. That's for them. But the days after, September 12, 13, so on, that's our day. It was on those days that the critical decisions of 20 years ago

were made in our name that would transform us into the ripped apart, sclerotic nation that we are today. For the last 20 years, the real criminals of 9-11 have gotten off completely scot-free. They have had their decisions whitewashed by history because Trump was supposedly so bad that their own roles in bringing him about or squandering the goodwill of this nation have been pushed to the wayside. And as time ticks on, an entire generation comes of age with no memory of the event itself, it actually becomes easier to move on from their

crimes. People who are younger than me have a vague idea that things got really screwed up after 9-11. But they don't know exactly how, and they don't really care because they have current problems to worry about. So my goal today is to remember the criminals of 9-11, to really never forget. The people who made discreet decisions at the time, who took the righteous anger of the American people, manipulated it, and used it to justify the war in Iraq, which to date has killed thousands of Americans, hundreds of thousands of Iraqis, cost Americans upwards of $2 trillion. There has never been a bigger betrayal of the United States and its people than by this decision and the people responsible. Those responsible should never be forgotten.

They are who they are. How did this happen? It is hard to remember, but think about this. This country will never be as united as we were on September 12, 2001. George W. Bush had a 90% approval rating. He had a mandate to do anything in his power to hit back at those who attacked us. We even had the luxury of knowing who did it because he took credit for it. Osama bin Laden, he was hiding in Afghanistan. How the hell did we screw up something which was actually so simple? All we had to do was go into Afghanistan, kill bin Laden, then come home and heal. So let's start with Bush. He is the chief villain in our story. Bush, because of his religion and

his own messianic complex, could not shake the feeling that his role was something bigger than what he was supposed to do. Going after bin Laden was too simple to him. He wanted his response to be part of a bigger war on terror and states who enable terror. Within his mind, Saddam Hussein was the embodiment of that. And so literally, September 12, 2001, 20 years ago yesterday, George W. Bush pulled aside his national security advisor for counterterrorism and asked him to explore whether Iraq had anything to do with 9-11. Think about that. As we know bin Laden is responsible, as ground zero is burning, the president is already thinking about

Iraq, even though no evidence, then or now, points to his involvement in that plot. But it's worse. It's not just Bush. Paul Wolfowitz, who's a dedicated neocon who served as Undersecretary of Defense under Bush on September 14th, 2001, brought up Hussein again at a meeting to decide how to respond. Wolfowitz drew no ties with 9-11. He just saw it as a mandate to take out Saddam Hussein and to replace him. It's hard to underscore how crazy this is, but in their minds, they already were churning to say, how do we use 9-11 and the anger of the American people to push an ideological war in Iraq, while bodies were still being pulled out of the World Trade Center? Bush told him that Afghanistan was first, but only 11 days after 9-11, George W. Bush asked Donald Rumsfeld, his then Secretary of Defense,

to update war plans in Iraq. It was the number two thing that was on his mind. So then what? We go into Afghanistan. So Bush isn't all to blame, right? Wrong. Why did we go into Afghanistan? To kill bin Laden. Well, in December 2001, as the U.S.-backed Northern Alliance sweeps across Afghanistan, we had bin Laden cornered in the mountains of Tora Bora. We knew he was there. He's holed up with Al-Qaeda fighters. What do we do? Well, on the recommendation of General Tommy Franks, we decide sending US troops is just too difficult. We'll rely on the Afghans to kill bin Laden for us. Let me tell you something. 20 years ago, the Afghan fighters, they're about the

same level of useful that we saw today. What do you think happened? Bin Laden slipped away. It's hard to underscore how much of a disastrous decision that that was. George W. Bush, his war cabinet, and his top general, Tommy Franks, had bin Laden dead to rights, the man who murdered 3,000 of our citizens, and who the entire nation wanted to see dead. But they let him get away, because they were cautious in using troops in the only instance in the war on terror where maximum support for using troops actually existed. To this day, they don't have a good reason for why they let bin Laden get away. But that day was a turning point, because from that day forward, the attention of the White House turned from bin Laden and Afghanistan back to Iraq.

Bush, per the New York Times' Peter Baker in his book Days of Fire, felt that Afghanistan was, quote, too easy, and that the American people wanted more. Obviously, they did. They wanted bin Laden dead. But because he let him slip away, he turned their anger towards Saddam Hussein. And it was that day forward, at the behest of Vice President Dick Cheney, Paul Wolfowitz, Condoleezza Rice, directed by Bush, that the U.S. government became obsessed with the idea that the real threat was not the man who attacked us on 9-11, but his potential, and I say potential, suppliers. They decided Saddam Hussein might be one of those men,

and so, with the help of the mainstream media, they sold us a new war. The idea was to harness the anger of Americans towards bin Laden and create a bogus middleman. They're like, oh, well, Saddam may have bad weapons, and he may use them against America, or he may sell them to bin Laden, even though they've never met and bin Laden actually hated Saddam Hussein. Almost one year to the day from 9-11, that's the type of stuff they were saying on TV at the time.

There will always be some uncertainty about how quickly he can acquire a nuclear weapon, but we don't want the smoking gun to be a mushroom cloud. Months later, it was over. Completely over. Americans overwhelmingly supported the invasion of Iraq. They were lied to by their government. Seven in ten Americans at the time believed that Saddam had something to do with 9-11. That's why I chose to do this monologue. We cannot forget Bush, Cheney, Rice, Wolfowitz, Douglas, Fyfe, General Tommy Franks. These people were trusted by the American people to steward us through our worst crisis since Pearl Harbor. And they misused our trust to push a disastrous war. And worse, let the real perpetrator slip away for 10 years.

So many millions suffered as a result of their actions. Our trust in government evaporated here at home. Our treasure was spent abroad. Our economy shattered, not to mention so many brave American servicemen and women who either died or are now suffering from PTSD. Today, I remember them by pointing directly at those responsible for screwing up our response to 9-11. September 11 was and should always be the day for the victims. But from now on, make every September 12, every September 13, the day that we remember how badly that we were misserved by the people in power. And the next time you see these liars on TV telling you to blame anyone but themselves for the state of the country, just laugh and remember

what they really did. So I just thought it was important. I don't think people understand what really happened. One more thing, I promise. Just wanted to make sure you knew about my podcast with Kyle Kalinsky. It's called Crystal, Kyle, and Friends, where we do long-form interviews with people like Noam Chomsky,

Cornel West, and Glenn Greenwald. You can listen on any podcast platform, or you can subscribe over on Substack to get the video a day early. We're going to stop bugging you now. Enjoy. Crystal, what are you taking a look at? Well, tomorrow, California voters are going to decide whether to keep or recall Democratic Governor Gavin Newsom in a closely-wing criticism for lockdowns and mask mandates, coupled with voter dissatisfaction over a whole range of issues spanning from homelessness to the extreme droughts and fires that have wracked that state. But really, the recall gained a lot of traction when these photos emerged of Newsom and his elite friends celebrating a birthday at a fancy restaurant called the French Laundry while the commoners were under full pandemic lockdown. Now, overall,

Newsom's approval rating has actually remained pretty decent, but the recall's political dynamics gave Republicans a real shot at victory here. Their theory of the case was that while recall supporters were fired up and angry with Newsom, liberal recall opponents, they were kind of apathetic and that they might not show up to vote at all. The design of the recall itself also gave Republicans a chance here. Voters are asked two questions on the ballot. First, they're asked, do you support recalling Gavin Newsom? And then second, they ask, who would you replace him with? So because the first question doesn't directly pit Newsom against a particular Republican candidate,

the theory went that it would be easier for independents and even some Democrats potentially to vote in favor of the recall without really thinking through the consequences of ending up with a Republican governor. Now, in early August, things were actually looking pretty good for this strategy. The Delta variant was surging, the leading Republican opponents were largely undefined, and the 538 average of polls tightened all the way to a tie, something we covered here. But since then, things have changed pretty dramatically. Now, we always take polls with a grain or a hundred grains of salt. However, Newsom is now the overwhelming favorite with a 15-point edge. Turnout shows Democrats flocking to the polls, and Republicans have generally watched their high hopes crash and burn. So what happened here? Well, it would appear that the GOP overplayed their culture war hand, flocking to an incendiary

candidate that Newsom easily tied to Trump and defined as extreme. As right-wing talk show host and classic boomer Republican Larry Elder surged, the Newsom campaign pounced, shifting the race from being a referendum on Newsom to being a choice between Newsom and Larry Elder. And Elder, with his many years as a right-wing commentator, certainly gave them plenty of material to work with. Here is Governor Newsom at a recent rally with Kamala Harris reminding voters Elder said that climate change is a crock and tying him to that extreme anti-abortion law that just passed in Texas.

The extreme weather we're experiencing, the likes of which we've never experienced in our lifetime. And we've got someone by the name of Larry Elder that believes climate change is a myth, believes it's a crock, and believes the answer, believes the answer to climate change is increasing offshore oil drilling.

That's his solution. Someone who doesn't even believe in the Clean Air Act. That's Larry Elder. Someone that celebrates what just happened to women in Texas and is celebrating the prospect of overturning Roe v. Wade.

Elder's previous comments justifying discrimination against women in the workplace have also become an issue, along with his suggestion that women just weren't smart enough to understand the nuances of the free market, which is why that they favored Democrats. The revelation of those comments does seem to be having an impact. Women are overwhelmingly backing Newsom and turning in ballots at high rates. But perhaps the most telling argument, and also the most relevant to national politics, came in a closing ad from Newsom. What's at stake in the September 14th recall? It's a matter of life and death. With Delta surging, Gavin Newsom is protecting California, requiring vaccination for health workers and school employees. The top Republican candidate,

he peddled deadly conspiracy theories and would eliminate vaccine mandates on day one, threatening school closures and our recovery. Stop the spread. Return your ballot or vote in person by September 14th. Protect California by voting no on the Republican recall. By the way, for those of you who are listening, that ad features a shot of top GOP contender Larry Elder all cozied up to President Trump. But perhaps even more significantly, it centers explicitly on Newsom's support for vaccine mandates and elders' opposition. Keep in mind, over 80% of eligible Californians have gotten at least one shot. That compares to about 74% of eligible Americans overall. Now, the vaccine-resistant are a pretty small minority in this state, as they are at this point nationwide. And looking nationwide, support for vaccine mandates actually dwarfs the opposition. An AP poll prior to Biden's vaccine or test announcement found that a majority

of Americans favor vaccine requirements for all in-person workers, while only 26% oppose. 23% were undecided on the question. One would have to assume that the California numbers on vaccine mandates are even more clear-cut. Whatever your own position is on the issue, politically, it would certainly appear that Democrats are in the strong majority on vaccine requirements. And make no mistake, COVID is still the defining issue of our time. Republicans in California bet on voter hostility to pandemic restrictions. Democrats bet on voter hostility to the pandemic itself. With those two options pitted head to head, Democratic enthusiasm has skyrocketed and Newsom has opened up what looks to be a 15-point lead. Now look, it's California. It's a solidly blue state.

The polls also haven't closed yet, so let me throw in my caveat that anything can happen. But the abrupt reversal of fortunes for Republicans in the state as culture war lines have hardened is a telling indicator. Terry McAuliffe and Virginia Democrats, they're leaning into a similar approach, as is Joe Biden, clearly at the federal level. Biden is practically begging for a Republican meltdown over his new vaccine or testing requirements. Now, I'm still generally of the opinion the Dems are pretty much screwed for the midterms, but it looks like Democrats have decided to fully join the culture war fight. Vaccine mandates are the new dividing line, and they are spoiling for the fight. Sagar, I'm actually curious what your analysis is here, because we were covering this, and it really was like... Joining us now, Matt Stoller. He is the American Economic Liberties Project Director, and he's here to talk about a very new and

interesting story that he brought to our attention about Wall Street greed after the 9-11 crisis. Let's go ahead and put this tweet up there on the screen. And Matt, it is really great to see you. Can you tell us a little bit about what we're looking at with the stock options and the story that not a lot of people have paid attention to? Yeah, so this is a, I think this kind of like encapsulates 9-11 and particularly the response to 9-11. So after 9-11 happened, the stock market went down by like, I don't know, 15 percent or so. And a whole bunch of companies like, you know, important companies like UnitedHealth, Black & Decker, Home Depot, used that opportunity to give their CEOs stock at a lower price so that when it went up later, those CEOs would get paid more. In other words, they didn't see 9-11 as tragedy. They saw 9-11 as an opportunity to loot

their own companies. And one of the companies, actually several of them, but one of them I'll mention, Merrill Lynch, actually lost a bunch of employees in 9-11. And 10 days later, what they were focused on was not the attacks, not the employees, but giving their CEO higher valued stocks so that he could get paid more. So this is what corporate America did after 9-11. About 190 out of the leading 1,800 companies did this. And it's kind of the most disgusting, rancid example of greed and opportunity on Wall Street and among corporate executives that I've ever seen. Do you think that it's just inherent in corporate America that they're going to behave this way? Like, have they always behaved in such an evil, shameless I say now, this was 20 years ago, but it's uniquely bad. We, we have not enforced the law against corporate crime, basically at an elite level, basically since the mid 1990s. And so this is what you get, you get lawlessness. And it was better

pretty much almost at any other time in American history. It was pretty good in the 1950s and 60s, 1940s. There were big political battles. But this basically tracks, are we willing to enforce the law against the powerful? And when you're not, the powerful act incredibly piggish and greedy in ways that are basically sociopathic. Yeah, and I think I want to underscore to people, I mean, back to that graphic is that like, we're not talking about like a month after 9-11, we're talking like days after 9-11, like people still pulling bodies out of the World Trade Center and they're focused on granting themselves stock options. You said that it was emblematic of our entire response to the crisis. What did you mean by that? Yeah. so 24 hours after 9-11, and I don't mean to get partisan here, but the Republicans were

in charge at the time. George Bush was thinking about and planning on invading Iraq, and House Republicans were saying, well, in response to this crisis, what we need to do is cut corporate taxes and cut capital gains taxes. This was 24 to 48 hours after 9-11 when the entire country was reeling. That's what they were talking about and thinking of doing. And they ultimately did both. And so corporate America does this. And, you know, corporate America does what they do. They looted. Right. These CEOs looted their own companies. Wall Street, you know, corporate America does what they do. They looted, right? These CEOs looted their own companies. Wall Street, you know, was looting their own companies, even if some of their employees died. And, you know, the Republican leadership and the,

you know, Republican president were trying to lead us in directions that were ultimately catastrophic. And that's what they did with this moment of immense tragedy that everybody wanted this to be a moment of unity. They totally exploited us and shattered the country, in many ways shattered the West. And I mean, I don't think we'll ever recover from that. What did you make of George W. Bush's speech over the weekend, Matt? I mean, he's a monster. I mean, there's no, like, I don't know about his personal character,

but the policy choices that he made, you know, he was way worse than any president than I've ever seen. I don't, you know, if you're a Republican, you know, he's way worse than any Democrat that's been in office. If you're a Democrat, you think Trump is the worst thing ever. Like, that's not true. What Trump did, what Bush did was so much worse than Trump. So to have him there and sort of self-righteously muse on, you know, whatever ails our country today. I mean, it's just kind of, it's appalling. I mean, it reminds me of him saying, you know, talking about the women of Afghanistan and how we can't withdraw. And it's just like, this guy is, is responsible for the problems that we're having today for the shattered society that we have today. So he should just not, he should just not be considered credible.

I think it's important for people to, for people to remember that given the mandate that they had, I talked to, this is basically a common theme of the show, so it'll sound familiar. Can you walk people through actually that corporate tax agenda? Because the tax cuts of 2002 and 2003 were basically in response to 9-11. I don't think it's a part of the story that people seem to understand how they were able to pass something, which frankly today would have been super unpopular and even still kind of was at the time, but was shrouded in the, in the tragedy. Yeah. So, so George Bush ran in 2000, uh, on, on a

humble foreign policy. Like, let's let that remind you of that. Like he said, we're not doing nation building abroad, unlike these, the crazy Democrats. crazy Democrats. And I, you know, I'm not boosting Bill Clinton here or anything. I'm just saying that's what George Bush did. And then, you know, he gets into office and they pass a tax cut in 2001, a tax cut for the wealthy before 9-11, which they're like, oh, this is an opportunity to do what we want to do, which is to cut capital gains tax cuts or capital gains taxes and and corporate taxes. And so the 2001 tax cuts were largely about cutting, oh, this is a stimulus. This is to deal with the economy that's not doing particularly well because we have a recession from the dot, you know, the dot com hangover, but also from 9-11. We're going to we're going to cut taxes on capital. And if you work for a living, you basically don't have capital. This was a purely a tax cut for the extremely wealthy and for corporate America, which were already doing fine. And so that's what the Bush agenda was. It was unpopular. The Democrats, as usual, kind of went along with it. And it ultimately

led to, you know, it was one of the contributors to inflating the bubble that later crashed in 2008, this very top-heavy, capital-heavy economy. The worst people in the country use 9-11 to justify pushing their own personal interests and radical ideologies, and the country and the world has paid the price ever since. Matt, thank you so much for illuminating one more aspect of that. Thank you, Matt. We appreciate it. Thanks a lot.

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